


Sunrise

by ready_to_kick_some_ass



Series: Adoption AU [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst, F/M, Family Bonding, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmare, adoption au, mama may
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ready_to_kick_some_ass/pseuds/ready_to_kick_some_ass
Summary: Melinda and Phil decide that it's time to be a family together.So Phil and Daisy move in with May, Fitz and Jemma.It's a big change and not everyone is sure about it at first.(Sequel to "Behind Closed Doors", "How To Find A Smile" and "Seasons Change")





	Sunrise

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon.  
A chilly wind blows and announces the approaching winter.  
It's one of those days, that seem to be made for staying inside, drinking tea and eating self baked apple pie.

And that's exactly what May's little family - including Phil and Daisy - is intending to do.

At the moment, May's peeling and cutting apples in a steady rhythm, while Fitz, who's sitting beside her, puts the slices into a bowl.

Phil and Jemma are preparing the dough, and May hears her daughter giggling from time to time. The light, happy noises makes her smile. She guesses that Phil shows once again, how clumsy he's in the kitchen.

Suddenly, Daisy, who was sent to the cellar by May, to get a new bottle of honey, approaches.  
She stops, puts the honey on the table and looks at May, chewing on her lip.  
“Melinda?” The girl eventually asks shyly, bouncing on the balls of her feet restlessly.

“Yes, darling?” May asks calmly, handing her an apple slice.

Daisy takes it, frowning.  
She seems like she’s thinking about something very hard.  
She opens her mouth a few times but doesn’t seem to get the words out. Finally, she just takes a bite of the apple slice.

May waits patiently, continuing to cut the apples. She finds one, that has a hole in it, that screams worm, and puts it aside. She knows Jemma will want to take a look at it later. She's fascinated by every living being, no matter how small.  
Daisy swallows. She looks down at her feet, takes a deep breath and then says very quickly, “Can I call you Mum?”

May looks up surprised, right into Daisy's wide open, sparkling eyes.  
“Of course,” she says. “Of course you can call me Mum, Daisy.”

Daisy makes a happy noise and wraps her arms around May for a moment.  
“Thanks Mum,” she squeals and runs away.

May smiles.

Fitz stares after Daisy with a  puzzled look. 

 

*

 

“Daisy and I are here almost every second day now,” Phil tells May, laying an arm around her.

“Yes,” May says, resting her head against his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. "And I think everyone is happy about that."

They’re sitting on the couch in the living room, casually watching some romance.  
May can’t follow the plot anymore though. She and Phil were talking most of the time.

The kids are upstairs. Daisy is sleeping in Fitz and Jemma’s room this night.  
May doesn’t think they’re sleeping already, although it’s quite late. She rather suspects, that they are playing or talking in their pillow forth, trying to be as quiet as possible to not get scolded by May.  
But she really doesn’t intend to scold anyone today, for not getting enough sleep.  
She’s too comfy here on the couch, held by the man she loves.

There’s a certain thought, more like a wish, she kept inside her mind for a while now. She feels like she can’t hold it back anymore.  
She draws circles on Phil’s chest with her fingertip and murmurs, “You know, I was thinking … you have to tell me if it’s too soon for such a big step, but … since you’re here almost always now, anyway, why don’t you and Daisy move in with us?”

Phil makes a surprised noise. His hand strokes her back.    
“Really?” He asks softly.

May smiles up at him.  
“Yes. Really. My kids love you. And Daisy asked me if she could call me Mum today. And we …” She stretches to press a kiss on his nose. “We’re doing great, don’t we?”

“We do,” Phil says. He buries his nose in her hair and closes his eyes. “I like this idea. But do you think your children would be alright with it?”

“I’ll talk to them,” May says.

 

*

 

May spends a lot of time thinking about how she can deliver the news to her children.  
She prepares the words in her head but has troubles to find a good moment to say them out loud.

She thinks Jemma will be thrilled.  
But Fitz’s reactions are unpredictable. She suspects, that he still sometimes is too scared to say or do something wrong. Most likely he will say nothing and act like he doesn't care.  
May thinks she will have to talk to him about it in private anyway.

A few days go by, with her still thinking, planning and imagining about their possible future in careful excitement. The thought of Phil falling asleep beside her every evening, makes her stomach flutter in a very pleasant way.

Finally, when they’re sitting all together at breakfast, she decides to spill the beans at last.  
It’s Sunday, which means it’s pancake day.  
Everyone of them eats them differently.  
May puts cinnamon and brown sugar on hers.  
Jemma chooses strawberry jam.  
Fitz simply pours an enormous amount of honey on his.

Eventually, when the heaps of pancakes have disappeared, May clears her throat.

“Phil and I … we were discussing something. He and Daisy are with us so much now and you know that me and Phil … well, that we like each other more than just friends do. So we decided to try something. We want to be a family. One family. That means that Phil and Daisy will move in with us soon.”  
She stops, looking at her children to see their reactions.

Jemma’s eyes widen, and she makes an excited noise.  
“Me and Daisy will be sisters then, right?” She asks eagerly and May nods at her.

Fitz scrunches his face up and immediately begins to chew on the sleeve of his jumper. A habit he developed over the last weeks.   
He says nothing, but his eyes avoid May’s.

“Fitz,” Jemma says, shaking his shoulder. “We’ll have a sister! Isn’t that awesome? And Phil,” she gasps. “He’s going to be our dad! I’ll always wanted to know how it is to have a dad,” she says, a dreamy expression filling her eyes.

Fitz shakes her hand off and gets up from the table.  
May watches how he walks to the sink, washes his hands thoroughly, and then leaves the room to go upstairs to his room.

Jemma looks after him, then she asks May quietly, “He’s worried about the change again, isn’t he?”

May just nods.  
“I’ll talk to him. Would you clear the table, bumblebee?”

“Of course, Mum.”

 

*

 

When May enters the room, Fitz is sitting on the bed, looking at his hands.  
This scenario is familiar.  
They had many talks in this room. On the bed.

May lets her gaze wander through the room for a short moment. It’s not exactly tidy. Other people would probably scrunch their face up at the sight of the heaps of different coloured Legos on the ground or the small piles of books everywhere.

But May knows that what seems like a mess for some, is a secret order for Fitz.  
She did the mistake to try to “clean” the floor only once.  
After, she spent the rest of the evening trying to calm an agitated Fitz, who stuttered so much, that he couldn’t explain what was the matter and ended up getting so frustrated, that he pulled at his hair violently until he started to cry in pain. Since that day, she leaves everything like it is.

She discovers a new poster on the wall and smiles.  
It’s a picture of space. Beautiful darkness with colourful planets and stars.  
She knows Fitz is fascinated by space.   
On one shelf she discovers Fitz’s newest Lego project. A spaceship, which looks incredibly detailed.  
Fitz's hands still tremble sometimes, especially when it comes to fine motor skills, so she guesses he must have worked very hard on this building.

“This is fantastic, Fitz,” she tells him, running a finger over the spaceship carefully.

He looks up at her and the glimpse of doubt in his eyes hurts her. She hopes it will disappear one day.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

His speech got much better the last time. It improved so much, that May decided together with his therapist, that he needed to go there only once instead of twice a week.

“May I?” May asks, pointing to the bed.

Fitz nods.

May sits down beside him, the mattress creaking softly under her.    
“Are you okay with Daisy and Phil moving in with us?” She asks him, deciding to be blunt as usual.

Fitz chews on his lip. His hands are playing with each other idly.  
Eventually, he shrugs.

“Words,” May reminds him. “I can’t read your thoughts, love.”

Fitz sighs.  
“Does it m-m-matter? What I am, um, thinking?” He asks, not looking at her.  
  
“Of course it does, Fitz,” May says seriously. “Listen. If you say, you’re not ready for that much change yet, we can start with them being here for only a weekend. Just so you see how you’re doing with that, alright?”

Fitz continues chewing on his lip.   
“Phil is nice,” he murmurs after a moment of silence.

May smiles.  
“He is. Yes.”

“He, um, said I’m g-g-good at building, um, things with my hands,” Fitz continues with a careful hint of proudness in his voice. “He said, maybe, one day, I c-c-could build a, a, a real spaceship.”  
  
May lays a hand on Fitz’s shoulder.  
“He’s right. You’re talented, Fitz. If you’re good at something, you can be proud of it. You should be.”

Fitz thinks for a moment.    
Eventually, he looks up at her with the hint of a smile on his face.  
“It’s okay. They can m-m … they can live here.”

“Really?” May asks.

“Yes.”  
Fitz shifts on the bed and suddenly hugs May.

He doesn’t do that often, so it's always something special for May.  
She wraps his arms around him carefully, taking care of not putting too much pressure in her touch.

They stay like this for a surprisingly long moment. Eventually, he moves away and gets up from the bed. He takes the Lego spaceship from the shelf and looks at it from all sides, a deep frown on his face. May watches, as he sits down on the ground and starts to rearrange some parts.

“I’m going downstairs, alright darling?” She asks, getting up from the bed as well.

He hums distractedly, not looking up from his spaceship.

At the door she asks him, “Will you join me and Jemma later? We wanted to make a walk into the forest. Maybe we can find some nuts.”

“O-o-okay, um, Mum,” Fitz mumbles.  

May's eyes widen in surprise.  
It’s the first time he calls her mum.  
A certain warmth fills her heart.

She leaves the room with a smile on her face.

 

*

 

They start with their project two weeks later, when the kids have vacation.

Daisy, who says it’s no problem for her to sleep by herself but wants to be able to get to Fitz and Jemma in case she has a nightmare, gets the empty room that was supposed to be a guest room, while Phil moves into May’s room.

The day Daisy and Phil arrive, is filled with a very short breakfast, a lot of suitcase carrying and unpacking. It’s mostly funny, but also busy and stressful. So May isn’t surprised, when Fitz soon retreats into his room, closing the door behind him.

She lets him.

But she calls him when it’s dinner time.

It’s their first dinner as family and they can sense the excitement in the air.  
The table suddenly is too small, and Phil says with a grin, that they will buy a new one next week.

A lot of first times happen this day.

For the first time, three kids brush their teeth in the bathroom.  
May gives three kids a goodnight kiss on the forehead.  
Phil does the same, but asks Jemma and Fitz for permission first, which both grant him.

For the first time, May goes to bed together with Phil and knows, that it won't be just for this night.  
For the first time, she holds his hand while falling asleep, knowing, that this is _their_ room now. _Their_ bed.

 

For the first time.

 

*

 

After the first day, they get into a rhythm quickly.

The nervousness from the beginning starts to disappear, as routines develop.

They work well as a family.

May knew it, but it still manages to astonish her.

It’s  not always perfect.  
But it doesn’t have to be.

Because they know how to help each other getting through difficult times.

 

*

 

May sits up in bed abruptly, blinking into the void.  
The scream that woke her up is still reverberating in her mind.

_Fitz …_

She gets up quickly, as she did many times before, and hastens to Fitz and Jemma’s room.

But when she arrives there, she sees, that someone else has been quicker.  
The sight in front of her both surprises and moves her.

Phil sits on the edge of the bed, his arms around a trembling, sobbing Fitz.  
She leans against the doorframe and watches, as he strokes Fitz’s hair and murmurs soothing words to him, while slowly and steadily rocking him.

May sees from the corner of her eye that Jemma moves around in her own bed, mumbling something incoherent, but falling back asleep the next moment.

She looks back at Phil, who’s still rocking Fitz.  
The boy has already stopped sobbing, and May decides to leave, since they seem to do alright.

She’s not used to someone else calming her son after a nightmare, but it’s nice to know that he trusts Phil enough to be able to get calmer in his presence. She counts it as a very good sign.

  
While May walks down the hallway, she throws a look at her watch. She groans.  
6 am. The sun will rise soon.  
She knows herself good enough to be certain, that she won’t fall asleep again.  
So she goes downstairs to make herself some early morning tea.

When she puts the water kettle on, steps approach her and the next moment, Phil wraps his arms around her, sighing into her neck.  
She leans back against him, putting her hand on his.  
“Alright?” She asks quietly.

Phil nods.    
“He’s sleeping again.”

“Did he wet the bed?” 

“No. But I changed his pjamas anyway. It was soaked with sweat. Is that green tea?”  

“Yes.”

“Can I have one too?”

“Of course.”

They sit down on the couch with their mugs.

Eventually, Phil clears his throat.  
“Linda. We never talked about what exactly happened to Fitz,” he tells her seriously, warming his palms at his steaming mug. “You said his mother died and his father is an alcoholic who now is in prison. But … if I’m living here and am supposed to take care of him properly, I need to know the whole story. He said _sorry_ over and over again and mumbled something about that he’s not able to breathe …”

May closes her eyes for a moment. Her heart aches.

Phil is right.  
They should have talked about everything.  
But it’s a difficult, painful topic.

She opens her eyes again, looks up into his calm, waiting face and sighs.  
“You’re right. It’s just … It’s still difficult to talk about it. It started when Jemma began to befriend him and bring him home. She once noticed bruises on Fitz’s arms, when he was here to play with her. He didn’t want to talk about it. And soon after, Jemma saw his father screaming at him. She alarmed me, but only one day later …” May stops, the pain taking her breath away. She swallows. “One day later, she went to Fitz's flat and he didn’t want to come out. He was scared. When he closed the door, Jemma heard screaming inside the flat. She immediately ran back to me and I called the police. Jemma probably saved Fitz’s life. His drunk father beat him and … and choked him repeatedly until he passed out.”

Phil inhales sharply.  
May sees, that his knuckles turn white, as his grip around the mug tighten.

She continues in a tense voice.  
“He suffered brain damage and was in a coma. When he woke up … he wasn’t talking. I pulled some strings so I could adopt him quickly, and took him home with me. It was a long time until he started talking again. The stuttering and the problems to find words bothered him a lot. It still does. As does the hand trembling. We had to find a speech therapist. He still goes there.”

May stops, feeling tears burning in her eyes.

“It’s a shame,” Phil says, his voice shaking slightly. “It’s a shame that this man chose the alcohol over his own son. He didn’t deserve Fitz. Now the abuse will be a part of Fitz forever. It will haunt him forever. We can only hope, that we can make a difference. That we can show him, how valuable he is.”

May nods, wiping her face.

For a moment, they sit in silence.

Eventually, Phil clears his throat and starts talking.  
“Daisy … She has nightmares too from time to time. She was in a lot of foster families. They treated her like a book you take from the library. As soon as they felt like she didn’t fit in the family or was too noisy or too active, they sent her back to the orphanage.”

May shakes her head in stunned anger.  
“I will never understand how you can treat a child like this,” she murmurs.

Phil nods. A hint of bitterness mingles with the warmth of his eyes.  
“Yes. Because of that, she has major fears of loss. The first week, I could sense how she tried her best, to not make anything wrong. She was hysterical, when she accidentally broke a vase one day. She told me over and over again, that she can learn to be better, that she will be better. Until I took her in my arms and told her, that she is the best like she is now and that it’s just a stupid vase. It got better already. A lot. But sometimes, she still cries because she’s convinced, she will lose me. Sometimes, she can’t fall asleep when I’m not in the same room.”

He stops, sipping his tea.

May swallows. Her heart hurts for the two kids, who went through too much in such an early stage of their life. At the same time, she starts to think about Jemma, who didn’t go through something as traumatic as Fitz and Daisy, but still has her own issues, which sometimes make her cry and question May what is wrong with her.

She tells Phil about it.  
“Jemma always acts very grown up and responsible, especially when she’s around Fitz, but … I feel like she’s too hard to herself. She wants too much in a too short amount of time and when she doesn’t manage to do things, like she intended, she gets frustrated quickly. Also, she has such a big heart for everyone … she suffers with Fitz, when he has his bad days. She suffers with everyone around her who feels sad. I fear this could hurt her a lot in the future. That she thinks so much about everyone else and maybe doesn’t realize, that she doesn’t always have to be strong, that she can allow herself to need comfort and help as well … you understand?”

Phil nods thoughtfully.  
“Everyone of them is so special,” he says, laying an arm around May. “I love them, and I love you. I’m sure we can be what they need. I’m sure we can help them, finding their place in the world. Help them, finding the happiness they deserve.”

“Yes,” May breathes. “I think you’re right.”

 

They watch the sunrise together on the couch, while the world around them start to fill with warmth again.  
It feels like hope comes back to chase away the demons of the past.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a native speaker and always grateful for being corrected! I'm constantly trying to improve my English, so please don't hesitate to tell me about mistakes. <3
> 
> Visit me on tumblr: [ready-to-kick-some-ass](https://ready-to-kick-some-ass.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
